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Basic Skills Math/Pre-Transfer Math/Transfer Math

College Learning Outcomes:

1. Written, Oral and Visual Communication: Communicate effectively in writing, orally and/or visually using traditional and/or modern information resources and supporting technology.
2. Scientific and Quantitative Reasoning: Locate, identify, collect, and organize data in order to then analyze, interpret or evaluate it using mathematical skills and/or the scientific method.
3. Critical Thinking: Differentiate between facts, influences, opinions, and assumptions to reach reasoned and supportable conclusions.
4. Problem Solving: Recognize and identify the components of a problem or issue, look at it from multiple perspectives and investigate ways to resolve it.
5. Information Literacy: Formulate strategies to locate, evaluate and apply information from a variety of sources - print and/or electronic.

Links to each sub-section

Basic Skills Math (MATH 025-MATH 097) + Pre Transfer Math (MATH 101-Math 103): MS_M_BS_PreTMath
Transfer Math courses (MATH 104-MATH 224): MS_M_TransferMath

List of degrees and certificates in each area

Math: AA and Transfer

DON'T FORGET TO SAVE!!!

First: Please rank on a scale of 1 to 5 (5=high) - how important each of these general outcomes are to the various parts of their areas in a matrix as follows:

	Effective Communication		Scientific or Quantitative Reasoning		Critical Thinking		Problem Solving		Information Literacy
Basic Skills Math
Pre-Transfer Math
Transfer Math

Next: Look at what your discipline has written previously about Discipline specific SLOs. How do these compare to each of the general college learning outcomes above?
Program Review 2007:

MATH_PR07_SLOs.pdf

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Program Review 2009-2010:

Being derived from the college's expectation of excellence in the mathematics program and allied disciplines, the math program SLOs concentrate on teaching the students problem-solving.
In particular, the program SLOs include the students' ability to:
a) clarify the problem in question by breaking it apart into manageable sub-questions;
b) discern and describe relevant factors; do appropriate observations, data collection, and analysis;
c) explicitly support the evidence or line of thinking that led to a particular outcome.

--- Mathematics Problem Solving and Critical Thinking SLO (from 2005) Where does this SLO fit with the general ones?
In our department we teach students to approach problem solving by

1. Familiarization of the problem by introducing a sketch or a table to organize information; rereading and rewriting the problem and listing information; distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information; recognizing what are variables and constants.
2. Recognizing and comprehending patterns and relationships within the problem.
3. Bringing to bear resources - factual, procedural and propositional knowledge - that a student is capable of possessing and applying to a translation of the problem into mathematical terms through conjecture or experimentation.
4. Formulating a solution through a correct and carefully stated sequence of steps and then checking it.
5. Evaluating the solution by judging the assumptions made and checking the reasonableness of the solution against a simpler problem that could be solved more easily. Asking if an alternate method for solving the problem is possible and, if there might be at least one, then loop through steps 2 through 4.

Think about how these programmatic SLOs relate to the College Learning Outcomes above. Feel free to edit, expand or change them. Try to make a program SLO for each College Learning Outcome with scores of 3 or higher on the matrix.

Math - Critical Thinking/Problem Solving SLOs: (Tony Monteith's powerpoint slides - August 2005):